Disaster Struck Without Warning

For almost two weeks forecasters knew the storm was coming, churning steadily toward Florida. Government weather watchers stationed around the Caribbean, as well as ships' reports, kept tabs on it.

But when it reached the Bahamas, forecasters lost track. Radio towers in Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands and Nassau, used to broadcast weather information back to the states, were destroyed in the storm's fury.

As a result, on Sept. 16, 1928, a monster Category 4 hurricane, spanning 500 miles, packing 150-mph winds, caught South Florida by surprise -- and Palm Beach County and the Lake Okeechobee region were pounded hardest by its violence.

When it was over, at least 2,500 people were dead, most in the poor farm towns around the lake.

"It was a disaster the likes of which we had never seen in South Florida," said Rusty Pfost, lead forecaster of the National Weather Service in Miami. The death toll ranks the storm as the most deadly in the state and the second deadliest in the nation.

Pfost's study of the 1928 hurricane -- which had no name, as hurricanes didn't receive monikers until 1950 -- led the National Hurricane Center to bolster the storm's death toll to 2,500 from 1,836, based on a closer look at the number of victims' graves in West Palm Beach and Port Mayaca.

"It could be as high as 3,000," he said. "We'll never really know."

His study moved the 1928 hurricane ahead of the Johnstown, Pa., flood on the list of the deadly U.S. disasters. The flood killed more than 2,200 people in 1889.

In the days before the 1928 storm struck, speculation was that it would curve northward along the coast.

Early on the Sunday the storm hit, Richard Gray of the Miami weather bureau predicted the shoreline might feel winds of 50 mph, not much more.

But, after failing to receive a hurricane progress report from a station in Nassau about 10:30 a.m., Gray realized the region was in serious trouble.

By then, there was no way to warn the masses. Few people listened to radio, and fewer still had telephones.

And in "those days the media downplayed hurricanes" because they hurt the state's tourist-friendly image, said Robert Mykle, who wrote a book on the 1928 hurricane.

Seven hours later, the storm hit South Florida.

Where, exactly, the storm core made landfall has come under dispute. Under the earliest analysis, it hit near Delray Beach. Later, hurricane experts would amend the track closer to Lake Worth, with the most powerful winds extending north to West Palm Beach.

According to the National Hurricane Center's documented coordinates from 1928, the eye's geometric center wobbled ashore near West Palm Beach, or considerably north of the other estimates.

Colin McAdie, the center's research meteorologist, said he believes the center's track is correct.

"Because so many people died around Lake Okeechobee, people sort of imagined this thing heading south of the lake," he said.

"But, in fact, the center went just east of the lake."

Part of the discrepancy is because the eye was huge, 25 miles to 30 miles in diameter, Mykle said.

It would have covered an area from Delray to north of Jupiter, he said. The rest of the hurricane was enormous, too.

"If you look at the barometric pressure, it was almost as strong as Andrew, yet it was five times bigger," Mykle said.

Hurricane Andrew, a system with stronger winds, ripped apart south Miami-Dade County in 1992.

In addition to killing thousands, the 1928 hurricane battered 60 miles of South Florida coastline, carved a swath of destruction 40 miles inland and left $325 million in damage, about $16 billion in 2003 dollars.

"The hurricane was almost the perfect storm," said Harvey Oyer III, president of the Palm Beach County Historical Society. "There was no part of Palm Beach County that wasn't touched by it."